Word of Salvation – April 2019
B.C.35 – The Sacrament Of Fellowship
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Scripture Readings: 1Corinthians 11:17-34 & John 6:25-35.
Text: 1Corinthians 10:16
Introd: Often Christians wonder about the fundamental difference is between OT and NT.
Of course there are a number of important differences such as Promise and Fulfilment.
But perhaps one of THE most important differences is this:-
That in the NT the saving work of Jesus Christ pervades all areas of life.
In the OT there is a great stress on holy days… holy people… and holy places.
The temple is the holy place in the holy city of Jerusalem.
The priests and Levites are the holy people.
And the feast days, such as the Passover, are the special holy days.
In the NT that has changed in quite a startling way.
Now all of life is holy.
All God’s people are a royal Priesthood.
All of time… and every place is now sacred and under the Lordship of Christ.
Yet if there is still any one place that is particularly sacred in the NT
then I guess we would have to say that it is the Lord’s Supper table.
Because in a very real sense it is the holy ground…
where God and man have fellowship in a very special way.
It is a special meeting place between Jesus Christ and His people.
Today we want to look at the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
in terms of a meeting… or an encounter… in terms of fellowship.
And we want to examine two questions about this encounter.
FIRST: How does Jesus Christ meet us there?
Okay, He’s the Host at that table… but how is He present at that table?
SECOND: With whom does the living Christ meet in this way for fellowship?
Who ought to be there for that living encounter?
A] THE KIND OF FELLOWSHIP WE HAVE IN THE SACRAMENT.
- The Lord’s Supper is an encounter of the Christian with His Lord.
A fellowship between Jesus Christ and His saved people.
But it is no ordinary fellowship… it is something very special.
The trouble is that when Christians try to describe what this fellowship exactly is
then there is a lot of disagreement among Christians of various backgrounds.
I personally find it beautiful how our confession speaks
of the way in which Christ comes to us in the Lord’s Supper.
This article the Confession is extremely reserved and very charitable.
It avoids some of the controversies that raged in the days when it was written.
It doesn’t try to resolve the divisive differences between Lutherans, Catholics & the Reformed.
I like the way it doesn’t try to make mileage out of what divides Christians.
Instead it stresses the mysterious way Jesus fellowships with us.
That it is beyond our understanding.
That it cannot be comprehended by us.
One thing that Scripture does make quite clear is that the L.S. is a fellowship with the body of Christ.
It presents the idea that it is a sharing in His body and blood.
And we find it reflected in this article of our confession.
In I Cor. 10:16 Paul says:
“Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?
And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?”
When the apostle Paul speaks here of PARTICIPATING in His body and blood…
then he uses the Greek word KOINONIA which means sharing… or fellowship.
So we have to do justice to that word and not play down what Paul is saying there.
The wine IS a participation in His blood.
The bread IS a participation in His Body.
I’m afraid that this teaching is often watered down.
Many read this as though Paul was saying that the wine REPRESENTS His blood.
And that the bread REPRESENTS His body.
The upshot is that some Christians do not see the Lord’s Supper as a special fellowship.
In many churches it is not seen as a real sharing in Christ.
Instead the Lord’s Supper is reduced to just a kind of memorial meal.
So the words of Jesus, This IS my body… this IS my blood… are effectively reduced to:
“This reminds you of my body…” and “This reminds you of my blood”.
So we must be very cautious. KOINONIA does not mean representation.
It does not just mean a reminder… it is actually sharing.
We can agree that the way we have fellowship with Christ in the Lord’s Supper is a great mystery.
But we must never solve the mystery by playing down the real fellowship with Christ’s body & blood.
Nor by reducing the sacrament to just a kind of memorial ritual.
I want to say two things about the way we have fellowship with Christ.
- Firstly, this encounter with Christ in the sacrament is not a physical encounter.
It is not a physical kind of fellowship.
There is a dilemma we face at this point.
A dilemma that is also there in this article of our confession.
OTOH we want to say that we have a very real sharing in His body and blood.
And by that we mean His proper and natural body and blood.
OTOH we also want to add that this is not a physical fellowship.
At least not as though this was a participating in Him with our mouth.
We saw something of this dilemma in John chapter 6.
There Jesus speaks some very strong language.
He said: I am the bread of life.
A little later He put it even more bluntly: (v.55)
“My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.”
That is strong language pointing to a real sharing in His body and blood.
And yet we must avoid seeing this in purely physical terms.
The Jews made that mistake in John 6.
They misunderstood Jesus, took offence, and asked: How can this man give us his flesh to eat?
We want to avoid that physical understanding of sharing in His body and blood.
The Reformation always rejected the Roman Cath. idea that the bread and wine
are miraculously transformed into the material body and blood of Christ.
From our perspective that is idolatrous.
We also want to avoid any kind of crude understandings of the Lord’s Supper.
Some of the early pagan enemies of the church, for example, made that mistake.
They accused Christians of cannibalism.
So we want to take seriously the words of Scripture.
That the Lord’s Supper really is a sharing in Christ’s body and blood.
We don’t want to water down this truth in any way.
And yet we have to understand this properly.
So we have always said that this must not be taken in a physical way.
Yes, Jesus did say “I am the bread of life” and we take that seriously.
Yet we are careful not to take that too literally.
After all Jesus also said, “I am the door…”, and… “I am the vine”.
So we don’t play down the reality of actually sharing in His Body and Blood.
But we don’t take this in a purely physical sense either.
- How then can we take this seriously yet avoid seeing it in physical terms?
How can we honour the real presence of Christ in the sacrament without falling into error?
We certainly don’t want to end up saying that Jesus is present in the Lord’s Supper
in the same way He is present in any other part of a worship service.
That would not be doing justice to the words of Paul.
When Paul says that it is a sharing in His Body and Blood
then he certainly didn’t mean that we were just fellowshipping
in our imagination… in our thoughts… it is much more than that.
The solution to this is the answer of our confession.
That we participate in Christ’s Body and Blood, SPIRITUALLY AND BY FAITH.
The feast of the Lord’s Supper is a spiritual banquet.
There Christ shares Himself with us.
There we enjoy the benefits of His suffering and death… of His body broken… His blood shed.
Because in our participation we have His wonderful guarantee
that as surely as we are fed with bread and nourished with wine
so surely do we partake of His Body and Blood.
So while we reject any thought of all this being taken in physical terms…
yet we want to affirm in the strongest way…
that Jesus Christ is really present at the Lord’s Supper table in a special way.
This is a holy place… a meeting place of Christ Jesus and His people.
B] FOR WHOM THIS FELLOWSHIP IS INTENDED.
- The second question we want to look at is this:
For whom is this sacrament of fellowship intended?
Who are the invited ones to this feast at which the Lord is present in a special way?
That is an important question.
Paul clearly shows that people can participate in this fellowship when they really shouldn’t.
In fact he tells us that it’s possible to eat and drink judgment on oneself.
And he spells out the result – that some people at Corinth were sick.
Others had ‘fallen asleep’ (IOW they had died).
All because of being at the Lord’s table when they shouldn’t have been there.
So, who should go to the Lord’s Supper?
That question has implications for the way the church exercises supervision over this sacrament.
Some churches leave it wide open for anyone to go who wants to.. the Lord’s Supper is for everyone.
Other churches at least limit Lord’s Supper to those “who love the Lord”.
Still others restrict things so much that even their own members hardly dare go out of fear.
So we have problems about who should participate in this fellowship.
Sometimes people don’t go, who really should go.
At other times people go there who really shouldn’t.
For whom then is this supper intended?
- Positively speaking we want to say that it is for born again believers.
Our confession tells us that too, right at the beginning.
“The Lord has instituted this sacrament to nourish and support those
whom He has already regenerated and brought into His church”.
And then our Confession talks about such people having a two-fold life.
It is the very clear teaching of Scripture that the believer lives twice.
He has a natural… or a physical life… from his first, physical birth.
A life that is common to all people.
But the believer also has a spiritual… or a heavenly life.
A life he received by being born again of the Spirit of God.
A life that not all people have but only God’s chosen people.
The Christian lives twice… he has two lives.
And then the point of the Lord’s Supper is this:
Just as that earthly and physical life needs food and nourishment…
so too that heavenly and spiritual life needs food and drink.
And that living bread for our souls is Jesus Christ.
So when we ask: Who should be invited to participate in this fellowship?
Then the answer is all those who are twice born… who have faith in Christ.
So the criteria for going to the Lord’s Supper is not: Am I good enough?
Of course you’re not good enough. No one is!
The criteria for attending the Lord’s Supper is: Faith in Jesus Christ.
But the sacraments are no help… and there is no sharing in Christ… if there is no faith in Him.
I could take an empty bottle and put it under a tap and turn the tap on.
And the water could run over that bottle and then pour away down the drain.
And the bottle would still be as empty as it ever was.
What needs to happen first is for the top to be taken off the bottle.
And only when the mouth of the bottle is open does it begin to be filled.
That’s how it is with us.
Only those whose hearts have been opened by the Spirit of Christ…
only they receive the blessings that come from having fellowship…
with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ at His table.
- However there is also an indication of those who should not go.
So we could also put it negatively – those who are warned not to come.
Here the Belgic Confession speaks about Judas… and about Simon the sorcerer.
These men received the sacrament.
But they had no fellowship with Christ.
For them there was no participating in His body and blood.
In fact, we could go further: Those men ate and drank judgment on themselves.
Not because they were sinful.
But because their hearts were not right with God.
There was no faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
We also think here of those in Corinth who abused the Lord’s Supper sacrament.
Because of their abuse they suffered – in fact the whole church suffered.
So Scripture also sounds the warning that the table of the Lord must remain holy ground.
It is the meeting place of Christ and His people.
When we think of these things then we also see something else.
That the church not only has the right… it even has the duty…
to guard the Lord’s Supper table from sinful participation… lest the whole church suffers.
Some disagree and argue that it is the Lord’s Table and not our table.
That’s true. But God has also made His church subject to its elders
So in this church we teach that the eldership of the church has a solemn duty.
They invite and encourage true believers into this fellowship with Christ.
But they are also to warn those who are unbelieving and unrepentant…
That unless they bow before Jesus Christ they have no place at His table.
It’s true of course that elders can never test the heart of a man or woman.
Only God can do that.
So we can and must supervise the Lord’s Supper… but only up to a point.
We must also do it recognising that the final judgment rests with God.
Perhaps we could put it this way:
If this sacrament is a sacrament of fellowship then the church has a responsibility.
We need to ensure in love, and as much as we are able
that those who come are people of faith…
people who already have fellowship with Christ thru the gospel of His death.
The Lord’s Supper table is then a very special holy place.
Of course the Lord’s Supper doesn’t add anything to the Gospel.
It is simply a more vivid and tangible way in which the risen Christ comes to bless His people.
But Jesus does meet with us – individually and communally – in a special way at every L.S.
May the Lord then make our Lord’s Supper celebrations
rich and meaningful times of participation…
of fellowship in the benefits of His death and resurrection.
Amen.
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.